The display of a chip card mostly is inserted as a prefabricated unit into a prepared recess in the chip card during the production, so as to keep the production effort to a minimum when manufacturing chip cards. A prefabricated reflective display, i.e. a display, the display function of which is achieved by reflection/absorption of incident light, has a reflection layer which is located on the underside of a substrate carrier layer and a liquid crystal layer which is located on the top side of the substrate carrier layer between two conductive path layers. The external conductive path layer of the prefabricated display is covered with a transparent cover layer. The display inserted into the recess is contacted to conductive path ends protruding from above into the recess. Finally, on top of the display inserted into the recess and contacted a cover foil is drawn, so as to cover the contacting pad.
The flat displays available at present, however, are sensitive to temperature loads, such as occurring during lamination, when for example layers made of thermoplastics are bonded to each other under pressure and temperature. Therefore, it is required to arrange the production methods in such a way, that loads do not occur or only to a minimum degree. With this the production costs inevitably rise, since more expensive machines and apparatuses for manufacturing the cards have to be employed. The reject rate increases during the production process of such a card.
It is therefore desired to insert the display into the card at a point of time as late as possible in the production process. With a reflective display, however, the reflection layer always is located on the underside of the display, such reflection layer mostly consisting of vapor-deposited metal, while the connecting points for the display are located on the top side of the display facing away from the reflection layer, so as to avoid production-related short circuits between the connecting points caused by the reflection layer. Due to this structure it is not possible to insert such a display into the card in a very late stage of the production process, because at least yet the contacts pointing towards the card surface have to be contacted and the contact pads have to be covered with a cover foil.